Now that Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, Alabama’s congressional delegation says it has a new top priority: getting Trump to move Space Command headquarters to their state.
Space Command is currently slated to permanently stay in what was meant to be a temporary home in Colorado, a decision made by President Joe Biden’s administration last summer. With Trump set to return to office, however, several members of Alabama’s congressional delegation are confident Trump will rethink the location of the Space Command center and once again pick Alabama as its home.
“Trump has said in the campaign he was going to reverse that decision. He has since told members of our delegation it’s going to be one of the first things he does, and it’s going to be over,” Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told NOTUS.
He added that it would not be part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual Pentagon policy bill that moves through his committee, but on “The Jeff Poor Show,” Rogers said he expects Trump to immediately “sign an executive order reversing Biden’s directive” once he’s in office.
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Trump established Space Command in 2019 to coordinate military operations in space. It is different from Space Force, which the Trump administration also launched in 2019. Plans to set up Space Command headquarters in Alabama were announced in Trump’s final days in office. But Biden announced last summer that the headquarters would stay in Colorado instead. Republicans were quick to accuse Biden of basing his decision on politics.
Alabama Republicans made it clear that now that Trump has won the presidency again, they’re on the case to get Space Command.
“I know that this is one of many things that he’s got that’s on his priority list,” Alabama Republican Rep. Robert Aderholt said of Trump, adding that the delegation has reached out to him.
Aderholt told NOTUS he has not personally talked with Trump about Space Command, but Rep. Dale Strong, who represents Huntsville, said last week that he spoke with Trump about it when he visited Tuscaloosa for the Alabama-Georgia football game.
“I feel very comfortable that Space Command will be in its rightful home at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama,” Strong told NOTUS, adding that he thinks Trump would agree. “In most cases when I’ve spoken with him, Space Command is one of the first things that he mentions. But Donald Trump understands national security, and that’s what he wants.”
Several members of the delegation who spoke to NOTUS said they haven’t met with Trump since Election Day. But Aderholt said future meetings with the president-elect and his transition team will be focused on the Air Force analysis that picked Huntsville as the location of the headquarters.
“The transition team and the president need to be reminded that this was a decision that was made early on because of that,” Aderholt added.
Now that Trump’s won, there’s plenty of attention on the promises he made before getting reelected — from giving cabinet positions to Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to conducting the nation’s “largest deportation operation” — that are getting immediate attention.
Trump did not make moving Space Command headquarters a theme of his campaign, but he has publicly supported having it in Alabama. In 2021, he indicated that he “single-handedly” decided to move it there.
“We intend to put pressure on the Department of Defense and have been in constant contact with folks with Trump,” said Rep. Gary Palmer, another Alabama Republican. “Now that he’s going in as the 47th president, we’ll be working directly with the Trump team to make this move and make it permanent.”
Republican lawmakers accused Biden of choosing Colorado over Alabama because it’s a blue state. The announcement of Colorado as the permanent home for the headquarters was also made in the midst of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s standoff with the Department of Defense over allowing troops to travel out of state for reproductive health care.
“President Trump knows the situation. He’s been through this, so hopefully, we’ll get some kind of clarification of where it’s going to be once he gets into office,” Tuberville told NOTUS. He later said that relocating the headquarters to Alabama was no sure thing and that lawmakers would “have to work for it.”
Will Ainsworth, Alabama’s lieutenant governor, posted Thursday that he had spoken with Tuberville’s team and it was confident that Trump will “bring Space Command to its rightful home in Alabama.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but at the time, the Biden administration justified the decision to make Colorado the base for Space Command as a matter of military preparedness.
Biden’s decision infuriated Alabama Republicans, who called for an investigation into the decision. (Lawmakers also demanded an investigation following Trump’s initial permanent location decision.) In 2022, the Department of Defense’s inspector general released a report saying the Air Force had properly selected Huntsville as the location for the headquarters.
Colorado lawmakers are already sweating the possibility of the move. They’re arguing that Space Command is fully operational where it is and that moving it would be a waste of resources.
“We’ve seen that in other moves, the cost of building a new building, the cost of paying for all those moves,” Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado told NOTUS. “It’s a waste of money, and it makes us less safe. So why do it?”
The district that Space Command is currently located in is represented by a Republican, Rep. Doug Lamborn, who said in a statement to NOTUS that he has “fought hard to keep it there.” His statement did not specifically name Trump, but he argued moving it would “unavoidably cause” a “lapse in combat readiness.”
“I’d urge our newly elected officials to consider these matters as they make crucial decisions in the coming months,” Lamborn said.
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Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. John T. Seward and Ben T.N. Mause contributed reporting.